The Cost of Immortality
by LexLuthor13
Summary: Pointless little oneshot, inspired by Alan Lightman's 'Einstein's Dreams.' Follow The Sentry as he ponders life, Lindy, and what it means to be the Golden Guardian of Good.


My name is Robert Reynolds.

And The Sentry.

And The Void.

I have…a problem. Two, precisely. Everyone tells me so. Everyone—won't let it go.

_Won't forget that you're running out of time._

Its midday in Manhattan and I'm pounding the hell out of a Doombot, trying to make sure it doesn't pull down that Suntory Whiskey sign and kill a hundred people who don't know when to run away.. Pounding it into tiny pieces and sending it back to its maker. A distant, cold man, sitting on his throne a world away. Probably watching me right now and thinking what everyone thinks when they see me.

_Who are you?_

_Why are you here?_

_Why are you doing this?_

The Doombot stares at me through dying green eyes. Mocking me. Asking me why I just decided to pull out its central processor and atomize it in my hands.

I shouldn't have to defend myself to you. Who are you, Doom and your Doombot? You're no one. And I…

I'm The Sentry.

_Golden Guardian of Good. When all hope has failed._

There is me.

It's 7 o'clock the same night and I'm having dinner with my wife. She stares at me from across the table, as CLOC and Watchdog give her comfort. I wonder if she understands. I wonder what she is thinking.

_Why don't you have any scars? You spent the afternoon fighting a giant robot on 5__th__ Avenue, and you've nothing to show for it except the memory._

The experience. That's what matters. And anyway, you can't get scars. Can't even break a bone. Can't even die.

Hm.

Suppose—suppose that people live forever. _Suppose that life, especially yours, never ends._

Where every action must be verified a million times, life is tentative. Words go unsaid, deeds unpunished. Every thing changes with every change of mind, every consultation. And people on the streets turn their heads and walk faster and try to act tough, to see who might be watching.

That's the cost of immortality. No one is free. When time makes fools of us, the only way to live is to die. In death, you're free of the weight of the past.

These are the people you save from the top of the Empire State Building, from the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge. _People who want to be free, Robert._

While you.

Are.

Living in the past.

The sad thing is, no one can be happy or free, whether stuck in a moment of pain or of joy. The tragedy is that we're all islands. A life of the past cannot be shared with one in the present on principle.

_But you met her in the past. And, oh…Lindy was time itself, wasn't she? As beautiful and as rare as the happiest fleeting moment of your time._

She was time.

_Time spent with you._

Motionless time. _At such a place, there is you, Robert, and there is Lindy_. _You will never take your arms away from her shoulders, will never leave her. _Will never put her in harm's way. Will never lose the passion of this moment in time.

_You could never hurt her, Robert. Nor can you continue this Sentry charade when there's someone waiting up._

Save those who can't save themselves, and hope time is as forgiving as she is.

Lindy. She was the learning curve. She brought you outside yourself, and that's why you can't find yourself talking to her lately. She's not you.

She's…so much more than Sentry or Void or Robert. Three separate personalities, or so they say, and she is part of them all.

"_I love you, Golden Guardian. I swear I do."_

You need to tell her that.

Perhaps this is the life I'm meant to lead; the consequences I'm supposed to live with. Every time a disaster threatens, every time CLOC comes online it becomes incumbent on me to save the world

A mixed blessing.

_Golden Guardian of Good._

And I can barely even tell my wife about it.

She doesn't understand, does she? She never complains. She never gets angry. She just is.

_And you, Robert. You can't even find the strength to relate to her. You can't serve humanity from your tower much longer, or else it'll kill you._

No, that's not accurate. You're the Sentry. Nothing can kill me. _You can't even snap your own neck. Certainly you have the poower, but do you have the will?_

Stop it._  
_

_That's why you've always found solace around Banner, and he around you. You're two lost souls. Frankenstein's creations given reason and heart—the very things that cripple you and empower you. You know it doesn't work that way. You cannot serve mankind without being part of mankind. You must share time with them.__You have to be what you fight for. Otherwise…you lose._ Lose the battle in the face of motionless time.

In such a place, do you even have to worry about people dying?

What do you do when you wake up to that? How do you rationalize uncertainty? Try to inflict—and that's really what you're doing, isn't it?—order on chaos? _Inflict motion on motionless time, if for no other reason than doing so gives you something to do, Robert._

It's debilitating. Disasters happen, and for all your powers, you cannot stop nature from taking its course.

Things will happen. Time will pass.

Lindy will pass. _And you won't be able to do anything about it. Your job is to make sense of them all. To defend the defenseless, and try and make life a little easier. For them. For you? To justify your own unexplained existence in time? _No.

_Life was never easy for you, Robert._ Perhaps it was never meant to be.

* * *

Perhaps we can never be free. Never answer all these questions we have. Never separate Present from Future or Past, forgetting Void and everything he is that you aren't. 

Never have it easy. Never know the life of Robert Reynolds, civilian at large.

_You can't, and it's quite myopic of you to be wasting time on this conjectural history. _Think, Robert.

If I hadn't taken that serum, someone else would have. _But it was you._

That's got to mean something.

_It does._

It means I'm here for a reason. _Sure. Why not._

Perhaps we are always Robert, and The Sentry, and the Void. Perhaps we can never separate them.

We will never have this again.

We will never have these quiet moments—plucked from the great stream of being, where we exist as afterthoughts on the mind of the universe. There will always be some disaster threatening, some soulless Doombot pillaging midtown with its dead, green eyes, staring at me and questioning my existence.

_Who are you?_

Sentry. I fight, therefore I am.

_Why are you here?  
_

I'm here. That's all that matters.

If saving the world were easy, everyone would want to do it. But who needs everyone else? You need time. Need Lindy. And you need fulfillment as the Sentry. Giving the future to those without it, and living in the past. Married to Time, unable to pass it by.

But it will pass. She will pass.

_You can cope, though. __If you cannot die, Robert…you can do anything._

If I spend it doing something better—something greater than living the kind of life everyone else lives. _The Sentry has given you meaning._

And the cost?

Immortality. Timelessness. Where no one is free; where we prostrate ourselves at the foot of Time. Where we cannot die, and have to watch everyone else fade away.

_Worth it, Robert. You save the world, and you face what no one else can. The only one you can really get on with is Rogers. He's out of time, and you have so much of it to share.  
_

With the people we care about. The people we live to save.

Lindy…

* * *

_** End **_


End file.
